Hippo

It used to be easier (hi again! :) ) I have to estimate it now (and as per your post - it is in practice indicative) using a mixture of: past experience, the frame rate count at the main menu before putting on the HMD, the measurable increase in GPU% util, turning off ASW w/ OTT. EDIT: I suppose I could say I get 40 fps in 2.5.6, and 80 fps in 2.5.6 w/ the mod, so 100% fps increase, but that would be naughty.

It's not a magic bullet, and it does introduce a number of glitches, certain effects don't look as good. It depends on what's most important to you. If it's high frame rates with AA, then it is very useful. I find I can get a 25% fps improvement, and it's not because I have a "low end system". As per Oculus's recommendations, games should be running (Rift S) at 80 fps for the optimal VR experience. ASW and 40 fps is a workaround and compromise. Yet I see many on here stating that they're very happy with the beautiful high graphics settings and getting 20 or 30 fps. As I say, it depends on personal taste (or more cynically, an ability for self-delusion). At the very least, I always try to achieve 80 fps when it's just my aircraft and nothing else, and accept that ASW will kick in when things get busier. Frame rates below 40 are unacceptable. Although ASW does a remarkable job, the artefacts introduced by it can at times be quite distracting. As to AA. I'm quite impressed that with it turned off things don't look as bad as they used to. Unfortunately, the jaggies from scenery objects like runways or buildings look dreadful. The cockpit surprisingly almost always looks acceptably good without AA - until you get shiny edges, when the shimmering jaggies look atrocious - this I just can't accept. Is there no way to (optionally) dial these effects down for the benefit of VR users? I suspect that it's the feature that applies AA to only a central portion of the screen that is responsible for most of the improvement from this mod (perhaps that alone could be implemented as an option by ED?) Before ED made the change to deferred rendering in the engine I could easily achieve 120 fps (equivalent) with similar settings on a 1070 and CV1. That change cut my frame rates in half. Decades (yes really) of my being an enthusiastic supporter of ED were flushed down the toilet when they took that decision. Since then, every engine improvement takes its toll. 2.5.5 - 2.5.6 has seen a decrease of 15 - 25 % (for me personally). ED have lost $100s of my custom since the DR change. I had in the past purchased aircraft that I have hardly flown, just to support them. If they want another penny from me, they are going to have improve the VR (w/ AA) fps considerably. P.S. Seriously, forget about a PD of 1.6. Try 1.2. P.P.S. Night is noticeably improved in 2.5.6. Night before the deferred rendering change was terrible (unusable). That's to be welcomed. All imho, of course.

Another suggestion to get some more fps is Kegetys's mod: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=215373 It does introduce some glitches, but can make a considerable difference. I had always used it since he released it, but hadn't been using it for the past few months because I've mostly been flying very simple missions, and was scraping by. It also involves a minor bit of installation effort, and it has to be reapplied for every update. Anyway, just applied it again, and tested. For me it means that for the test I described in my previous post, I can stay at 80 fps for the entire flight. Notice how GPU % always stays below (but close to) 100%, so ASW never needs to kick in.

Great advice already given. I'll just add: Set textures to High. Medium make the cockpit look terrible. Shadows are expensive. Try turning them off and see if you can live without them. When benchmarking CPU always look at the individual cores. There should be one that does most of the work. Maybe take a look at my post here (and the link within) and try to replicate what I do and see if you get similar results. I don't know how close a 2070 is to a 1080 ti, but I'm guessing pretty close. If the results are very different, then there might be an issue. Note what I'm doing with the nvidia settings - someone recommended this to me on here - it improves AA at less cost that going 4x in DCS. I use a PD of 1.2. Set it in DCS, and (at least for testing) don't use OTT at all. Unfortunately, getting decent frame rates in VR is getting harder and harder with each DCS main engine update. You should be able to get 40 fps easily, but settings have to be set fairly low.

It's not a bug, it's a feature. (Possibly.)

Indeed. Thanks for reply. What sort of performance can you get on the Rift S? I own the other civil aviation product - their VR implementation leaves a lot to be desired, although I can manage 40 (ASW) / 80 keeping settings very low + decent AA (which I really can't do without).

I don't own that particular product myself but would be interested to know what sort of fps gains people are seeing, expressed as a percentage.

Sorry to presume, but I assume he means the Restore button. If so, it would be useful to know which parameters were not set to defaults. Either that, or when reinstalling / updating drivers, you get an (from memory) express or custom option. The custom option option allows you to return all settings to defaults, again iirc. I haven't used the custom option for years, and always use express - I've never had an issue. Certainly worth a try if you're having serious performance issues. But also worth asking the OP, is there now any difference between 2.5.5 and 2.5.6 performance. Was there previously? In my case, I have both 2.5.5 and 2.5.6 on my PC and can switch between them in seconds for testing, I get around 15% performance loss going to 2.5.6. On missions with lots of AI / statics, the performance drop can be severe (~80%) - the only change made is the DCS version.

2.5.6.45915 performance remains worse than 2.5.5 Cf. https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4221938&postcount=73 I estimate that the GPU is having to do around 15% more work. The difference in FPS on the main menu screen is around 20%. N.B. This is in a mission with no other AI or static objects. I've given up on testing with those, as there is a clear issue there.

That's also what I do. But there's an unused analogue wheel on my throttle that I would much prefer to use for this. There isn't actually a problem here. This is a wish list forum, and the request is for a feature that should've been in place from day one, and which would be easy to implement. Easier and much more useful than putting in a fruit machine for 1st April.

To OP. You should find this is now ok with the latest update. DCS 2.5.6.45317 Open Beta Refer to end of change log: https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4251208&postcount=91

I don't even have shadows turned on. In my experience, it's always been a considerable performance hit. My aim for VR is 80 fps, with MSAA, with not much going on. This is almost impossible anyway - but it means I have to turn almost everything else off. The 2.5.6 updates have made it even harder - I now have to lose MSAA for equivalent performance. For missions with the AI issue - forget it!

Sorry, yes I did get that, but couldn't resist twisting your words to make my point. ;) I actually flew the Familiarisation F-18 mission last night, and was able to fly it without issue. With my (very) low settings I was able to start up, taxi and takeoff. Frame rates were mostly 40 fps (ASW), with some dips to 25 fps - not ideal but perfectly usable. I was down to a constant 5 fps (totally unusable) with the previous version. For reference, once away from Nelllis, it's 80 fps throughout.

I'm not sure how simple it was for poor old Maple Flag to have rework, test, etc many of their campaigns. Hopefully, it wasn't too much of an effort. Still, the simple fact that the effort was made suggests that this puppy's going into stable with whatever the issue is.

I was having serious issues with missions in the F-18 Aggressors campaign. This has thankfully now been fixed: But, and it's a huge but, it appears to have been fixed by having to make considerable changes to all of the missions. Thoughts / inferences: Would they really have gone to all this trouble, if it was an engine issue which was going to be fixed imminently? The previous versions of the missions would still tank the frame rate (I tried to test this but those missions wouldn't run for me in the new version). This latest version of the engine will be going to stable, and many missions, etc, will have to be reworked to avoid the issue, whatever it is. It really would help if ED would just explain what's going on. I reckon something's inadvertently been broken and only been discovered at a very late stage. Now it's so much effort to go back and lose all the work, and they're trying to kludge it. Very, very concerning.

I only did a very quick test - jump in and out of the first (fam flight) mission. Sitting in the cockpit, there were no longer frame rate issues. I was down to 5 fps previously, now mostly 40, with some ASW dips to 25 (VR - Rift S). EDIT: Flew the entire FAM flight mission last night. I was able to fly the entire mission without issue.

:) May I humbly suggest, Sir, that you might be taking things a bit too seriously?

I had not tried the above mission with the latest version, and I can now see that the issue is no longer there. Apologies for jumping the gun. And thank you to all responsible for making the mission (FA-18C - FAM Flight.miz) now usable. But... I strongly suspect that the underlying issue remains unresolved, and has something to do with multiple AI objects. I tried loading the old version of the mission from a backup to test this, but this didn't work (copy protection, I expect). Perhaps your testers are able to check this, though?

I hate to be critical, especially as you personally always make so much of an effort responding on here, with almost superhuman patience. However, the above statement is concerning. The frame rate issues that have been repeatedly reported are so severe that it seems that nothing should need to be highlighted. The team should be seeing this as the top issue and devoting all their efforts to fix it. The above statement, unfortunately, can lead to the impression that the issue is being underestimated or even ignored. On top of that the issue remains after two updates, which points to it being serious and possibly not fixable without considerable effort. I'm sorry to be skeptical, but there's a strong echo here of the deferred shading (but many times worse) performance debacle. Speaking for myself, if this goes through to stable, I'll stay on 2.5.5 and will not purchase anything until this issue is fixed. Obviously, how ED choose to communicate is up to them, but in an ideal world I think the following should be communicated clearly: - an acknowledgment that they are fully aware of a very serious performance impact ("they are working of fps issues" doesn't really cut it). - what they think is causing the issue - what they are doing about it - approximate ETA for fix - confirmation that this issue will not go on to stable My own report is below. Flying the 1st mission from a campaign I bought, I get 5fps, where previously on 2.5.5 I was getting 40 fps, with dips to 25. This makes it unusable. My own settings are already low. If I go any lower, the visual quality will make it so that the game is not worth bothering with. I see no need for logs, tracks, etc. One of your testers just has to fly the mission and they will instantly see the issue. https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4237111&postcount=2 EDIT: By 1st mission above, I mean the mission that follows the one in the link, where you start parked at Nellis, in the cockpit, and there are lots of parked aircraft nearby.

I find your post quite extraordinary. Of all the posts on these forums you criticise the testing methodology of the OP? His post is already superior to the overwhelming majority simply because it includes screenshots and numbers. We are all just users of a game volunteering our time for free on this. I'm not quite sure what you're expecting. ... I'll take the liberty of responding on behalf of the OP for this one. Yes, he knows.

RE: Lighting. TBH, the main thing I noticed is that everything is brighter than it was. Night I think was improved. Outside with lights appearing brighter, and things that should be darker, appearing to be so. But couldn't this just have been done by changing textures and lighting coefficients? Inside the cockpit, the way the landing gear handle (f18c) lights up the cockpit around it and similar effects. By day nothing in particular shouted out at at me; I did feel that things looked a bit more "like reality", but this could just be down to everything being brighter. Again, TBH, I haven't taken the trouble to compare in any detail. I haven't even bothered turning on SSLR, not even once, after I read about the fps impact of that. (This is all in VR, to be clear). Now, in the change log, we get this: I have not seen any more detailed descriptions regarding lighting changes. Have any been presented by ED? As far as I can tell street lights are baked in (Caucasus). TBH I've only tested with moonless nights so far. Wasn't lighting from weapons dynamic already? The improvement at night was very welcome, but I think (and hope) is only the beginning, as much still needs to be done. I have sympathy with both your points of view: on the one hand, clearly something fundamental has changed, unfortunately ED seems to not have gone to the trouble of providing details. On the other, practical observable benefits seem to be very few so far, and possibly at great cost. (Sure, still WIP).

Sorry, but going completely off topic: in general, how much of what is discussed here is replicated in the Russian forums? Do you get the impression that much of what is discussed here (in English) gets to the developers?

All fair enough, although the OP was discussing VR. I still haven't gotten over deferred shading, I'm afraid. My own situation: 2.5.5 OB: 80fps in a mission with the f-18 and nothing else going on. 2.5.6 OB: I have to give up anti-aliasing to keep 80fps. It does make a difference.

20% is NOT "slight" or "marginal". In VR, where we are already pushing limits, it is extremely undesirable. The question is, is the new lighting "and stuff" worth it? I think, in VR, night is better, but have to question if it has to come at the price of a 20% reduction in fps? By day, I couldn't say. A 20% fps decrease should not be "unsurprising". It's this sort of attitude that has severely damaged the VR experience over the past couple of years. I accept that's it's still in beta, and optimisation is probably still ongoing. Let's come back to this when the changes go into stable. In the meantime, anyone who cares about VR should be highlighting any decrease in performance. Once it's gone, it's very difficult to get it back again.

I think that there are two distinct effects: a general frame rate loss of up to 20%, as you describe, which can be seen even in missions with no other objects. The other is a much more severe frame rate loss > 80 % when (AI) objects are introduced. My concern at the moment is that the severe (AI?) object effect is masking the other one, which is being overlooked. A 20% fps decrease is still a serious problem.